


Scars

by sleepylotus



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 23:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepylotus/pseuds/sleepylotus
Summary: Post DMC, after fetching Jack from the Locker, Jack questions Elizabeth's new scars. Oneshot, complete.





	Scars

  **It was not a mistake** that Elizabeth happened to be loitering in the passageway between the galley and Jack’s cabin when Cotton appeared with the Captain’s supper upon a tray. “I’ll take it to him,” she offered, separating herself from the shadows against the bulkhead.

For a man who could not speak, Cotton had perfected the art of the poignant look. She knew he knew exactly what she was about, but he relinquished the ration anyway with a nod. Parrot made a wheezing noise from the old pirate’s shoulder that might have been a mocking laugh.

Elizabeth knocked, and expecting his dinner Jack barked “Come!” without a second thought. He’d been avoiding her since they snatched him from the locker, and she didn’t know how he would react to this small deception. A trill of… _something_ scuttled down her spine, but before she could talk herself out of it Elizabeth grasped the door handle and pushed inside.

Jack was bent over his desk, the surface of the table completely covered with that strange turning chart and all manners of navigational instruments and who knew what else. “Put it over there,” Jack grumbled, wiggling be-ringed fingers in the direction of a side table that was only half covered by bric-a-brac.

“You’re looking a bit haggard, Captain Sparrow, perhaps you should eat _now_ ,” Elizabeth dared, coming to stop at the edge of the desk with tray in hand. It wasn’t much—salt pork, dried fruit, and hardtack. By some inexplicable trick of the Locker the stores in the Pearl had not gone bad in all the time passed since the Kraken took her down.

Jack bolted upright in his chair as though the Devil Himself had whispered in his ear.

“You should _not_ be in here,” he spat, pointing an accusing finger in her direction. The big emerald on his finger glittered in the low light.

Elizabeth quashed down the impulse to run, and lifted her chin to the surly sea captain. “I rather thought we should talk,” she said, and Jack feigned choking on a swig of rum.

“We should _talk,_ eh? And I thought we’d said all that needed sayin’, _Miss I’m Not Sorry._ ”

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, but rather than enter into a staring contest with Jack she turned her attention to his desk, looking for a place to set the tray. “You really should eat,” she urged in a quieter voice, picking up an astrolabe to relocate. Jack grabbed her wrist, wresting the valuable if not antiquated navigational instrument from her grasp.

“Don’t touch my things. Pushy wench…”

Elizabeth was unable to suppress an emphatic eye roll, and plunked the tray down hard on the desk. “For some reason I thought you were a grown man, not a petulant child.”

He did not answer her jibe, his attention fixed elsewhere. A moment later she realized he was staring at the scars upon her wrists, long slashes still the fresh pink of a newly healed wound. Instinctually she tugged at her arm, but Jack was stronger and would not let go. “What the fuck are these?” he demanded, catching her other wrist to see more of the same.

“Let go,” she growled, pulling, but he simply brought her wrists together before him, perusing the old wounds at his leisure.

“Didn’t think you were the type,” he ground out, a note of something Elizabeth couldn’t quite identify in his tone. It wasn’t quite anger, but not exactly sympathy.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Well? Ye didn’t have ‘em before.”

“Tia needed blood for a spell to find _you,_ you _oaf_ , you’re hurting me.” She couldn’t help but think he meant to; she knew Jack could touch a lady gentle as a butterfly’s wing, if he wanted to.

“A lot of scars just for a _spell_ ,” said the captain with narrowed kohl-lined eyes.

“She needed _a lot_ of blood.” And so she’d given it, even though she’d hovered on the brink of death for days afterwards, sick as a dog. To find Jack…it had been the least she would have given.

“Why you?” Elizabeth blanched, pulling at her wrists again, no matter how fruitlessly. She’d thought she wanted to talk, but she changed her mind. She wanted to _hide._ But then he caressed her wrists with the blades of his thumbs, and she froze, unprepared for such tender contact. “ _Lizzy._ ”

He had not called her that in all the time since his rescue, and the fight seemed to drain out of her at hearing it. His hold loosened in response. “Because I was the last one to touch you,” she admitted, and those seemed to be the magic words to win her freedom. Jack released her so quickly she stumbled.

Though she surely had no right, the thought that he found her so distasteful hit her like a dagger to the heart. What was she thinking, coming here like this? He would never forgive her. She had _killed_ him. Elizabeth toyed with self-pity, but in the end it did not stick. Rather than feel sorry for herself, anger surged like an eruption, lava roiling in her core. She stepped into Jack, poking him hard in the chest. He recoiled, sitting as far back in his chair as he could from her, but she gave him no quarter, leaning on the carved arms of the chair.

“And what the _fuck_ was I supposed to do that day, Jack? When the Kraken came and was killing us left and right? I did what I had to do to save your crew. Gibbs, Cotton, Marty, Pintel, Ragetti… _me._ _Tell me_. Tell me that there was another way to save us all besides chaining you to that mast? What did I _miss_?”

Jack’s nostril’s flared as he breathed, his chest rising and falling. She tried not to stare, and failed a little. When at last his voice came there was no fire, just…exhaustion. “You missed…that I came back for _you_ , Elizabeth. You missed that the shackles were _wholly_ unnecessary.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“And I suppose I can’t blame you, really.” A bitter smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Except…you might recall that I have always protected you, in the end, when my conscience finally wins over my sense of self-preservation. Takes a while, sometimes.”

At first she wanted to argue that it wasn’t true, but she thought on the cave on the Isle de Muerte—the moment Barbossa pointed his pistol at her Jack shot him without hesitation. Or even upon the Dauntless, when Jack suggested she might be put away for safe keeping, knowing all along that he intended to send undead pirates over to finish Norrington’s men off. And then there was that little time when he sacrificed his own freedom to save her from drowning.

Elizabeth felt her knees go weak beneath her, and she did not faint, per se, so much as she melted into a puddle onto the deck.

She’d lost her faith in him that day.

All that song and dance about how she thought he was a good man, but given the chance she didn’t give him the chance to prove it. Didn’t _trust_ him to prove it.

 _He rowed away from the Pearl!_ hissed a voice inside, reminding her that her actions had not been unfounded. _He left you to die!_

There was a pain in her chest like her heart was caving in on itself.

“Your _conscience,_ is it?” she asked, hardly recognizing her own voice.

“What word would you rather I use, Lizzy?”

_Love._

She didn’t dare say it now. Didn’t dare ask for it. Even if maybe now more than ever, she was certain it was true.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse as though she’d screamed her soul to the heavens.

In that moment, Gods help him, he believed her. Though he didn’t say so, just stared at her long-limbed form folded up on the floor at his feet. It seemed wrong somehow, and he forced himself out of his chair, crouching before her. “Come on, Lizzy,” he said, holding out his hands. “No need to sit on the floor.”

She took his hands, and yet made no move to let him pull her up. “Does the fact that I came for you mean nothing?” she whispered. “Is there nothing left for us?”

Jack looked at the scars upon her wrists again, and one by one, pressed his lips to the sensitive skin of her inner arms. He knew a thing or two about scars, and knew those cuts had been deep. Tia had gotten her blood, no doubt, and then some. Lizzy may have almost died. The thought did inexplicably dark things to his insides. He’d thought of killing her more than once in his days of madness in the Locker, but here, with her before him… _no._ She was too precious a thing to have been risked for his sorry old hide.

“I don’t know, Lizzy,” he answered truthfully. “There’s no going back, you know.” They would never be _innocent_ again, if such a word could ever be applied to two rogues like them. But perhaps they could be…could be _what,_ exactly? “If there is nothing left…will you regret it? Will you wish…you’d left me there?”

Without a moment’s hesitation Elizabeth shook her head. “No, Jack.” She held up her wrists, displaying the scars she’d fought so tenaciously to hide just moments before. “I would do it all over again, for _you_.”

The pirate closed his eyes, savoring those words, feeling them settle upon him like a balm for his soul. What had he ever done, really, to deserve her regard? And the others too. Gibbs, Cotton, Marty…even Pintel and Ragetti, weird as they were.

His crew.

His _family_?

It tied his heart up in knots, and he didn’t even begin to know where to start untying them. “Well, _don’t_ ,” he said gruffly, and his hand seemed to find its way of its own accord to her cheek, caressing her sun-browned skin. No longer the blushing English rose, was Lizzy, but life at sea suited her. “I ain’t worth that.”

“ _Pssh_ ,” she hissed, her own hand covering his upon her cheek. It felt _so good_ to be touched by him. _Too good,_ perhaps, and she told herself not to mistake it for forgiveness. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Jack muttered something under his breath that might have been _obstinate woman._ Lizzy didn’t know, didn’t get the chance to ask, because suddenly Jack’s mouth was on hers, those soft lips that said such _infuriating_ things plying her with a gentle kiss. It was nothing like their _kiss of death_ , and yet when Jack drew back Elizabeth still found herself gasping for breath. “Jack?”

“Just an experiment, love.”

_Love._

She could not help it. Her lips curled in a smile, and her heart felt like it was made of fireworks.

“And your conclusion?”

“Not sure. Have to try it again.”

Once more his mouth found hers, a much deeper kiss that curled her toes and had her grasping for purchase upon his shoulders and in that mass of ropey hair. The kiss did not stop. Not when Elizabeth accidentally knocked over the chair with an outstretched leg, and not when Jack’s solid weight pushed her down into the hard oaken planks of the floor.

She bore it gladly.

**Author's Note:**

> In response to a prompt from potterhaven-394 on tumblr. Thx hon! <3


End file.
